PULLING POWER

oday, the idea of wooden block-making as a cottage industry sounds quite natural, but as Jaap Ording is quick to point out on the phone from his home in Haarlem, Netherlands, the wooden block was in fact “the first industrialised product in the world.” The Royal Navy used an immense amount in the days of sail. Each of its ships would have around 1,000 blocks, and the annual RN block order was around 100,000 units a year. Jaap’s business today, although clearly busy and industrious, is a different story altogether: “Dad started the business in a shed in his parents’ back garden in 1970,” says Jaap.